When my wife Margaret was struck down by a stroke on holiday and lost her mobility one of the redeeming features was that after her initial care in Truro she was transferred at our GP’s insistence to Gossoms End Community Hospital in our home town, Berkhamsted.

As a result of her stay there and later at the now closed Holywell rehab unit at St Albans Hospital she has progressed in two years from help to get out of bed and living in a wheelchair through to the first stage of slow independent walking without any aids.

That is in no small part to the loving care at Gossoms End which led me to write a blog two years ago praising the work there.

At the time I said :

“What is particularly good is that some one has properly planned this facility so that stroke victims and people recovering from serious injuries can get proper physiotherapy and nursing care in a decent environment. The hospital unlike Watford, the main accident and emergency hospital for West Herts, is under no pressure to throw people out at the earliest opportunity. The cost of running it is much less than using a ward in acute hospital.

But the real key is that this is a nurse and physiotherapy led unit – with a weekly visit from a consultant and a doctor on call. The result is that the driving force behind the care is to find the most suitable rehab treatment for the individual patient.”

Alas that is no more. The unit closed today because the Herts Community Health Trust which runs it has overspent on agency staff because they can’t get full-time staff. It has faced criticism over staffing levels at other hospitals. Staff have been transferred elsewhere.

If you read the latest board minutes you see a trust that is struggling to provide services across Hertfordshire It is short of staff in key areas, facing an emergency financial crisis and failing in its ambition to become an independent foundation trust. Indeed it can only achieve the latter as far as I can see by slashing services so it can become profitable. Most of the key issues at the board meeting have a red or amber tag – meaning they are facing a disaster unless they slash costs in four weeks by closing down every possible service.

This local example to my mind illustrates the lie by our national politicians particularly by Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary – about the state of the NHS. They trip out figures boasting about how much extra money there is. They haven’t a clue about integrated planning. They don’t know and don’t care how one policy – high house prices in Hertfordshire probably contributes to difficulties in recruiting staff -impacts on another. They are incapable of joining anything up – silo politicians.

In the meantime they talk about so-called government policy ” care in the community” or ” no care in the community” as I prefer to call it. This is just an excuse to close down facilities and dump the sick ,ill, disabled and the insane on their families knowing that taxpayers don’t have to pay out. And if they haven’t any family, well, they will probably fall over and die and that will be a saving on the pensions bill.

To my mind closure of such facilities is short sighted. It means they only half rehabilitate people, failing to draw out their full potential and not wishing to acknowledge that new medical research shows that stroke victims continue to improve for a much longer period than people thought. We are lucky that we can still afford to pay for Margaret to have private physiotherapy. I notice the lack in improvements among those who can’t.

I realise we have been lucky but I fear for anybody who has the misfortune to have a stroke in Hertfordshire today. Don’t expect the board members of Hertfordshire Community Health trust to do much about it.

The view of Gossoms End garden from the terrace of the dining room. A good NHS facility

The NHS is taking a beating from the press and media at the moment – just at the point Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, wants to open it up to the private sector. Here is a rather heart warming story of why it is still very good. Not everybody is being neglected by uncaring nurses and health professionals.

The entrance to Gossoms End Community Hospital.| Pic courtesy: NHS Herts

Unless you live in the Chilterns town of Berkhamsted you probably will never have heard of Gossoms End Community Hospital named after an ancient hamlet adjoining the town.

This unsung place is providing excellent physiotherapy for my wife, Margaret, who is recovering from a stroke after a rather dramatic rescue by air ambulance from the Isles of Scilly – see my earlier blog atDavid Hencke.

What is particularly good is that some one has properly planned this facility so that stroke victims and people recovering from serious injuries can get proper physiotherapy and nursing care in a decent environment. The hospital unlike Watford, the main accident and emergency hospital for West Herts, is under no pressure to throw people out at the earliest opportunity. The cost of running it is much less than using a ward in acute hospital.

But the real key is that this is a nurse and physiotherapy led unit – with a weekly visit from a consultant and a doctor on call. The result is that the driving force behind the care is to find the most suitable rehab treatment for the individual patient.

Also if there is an emergency – my wife was discovered to have two new blood clots on her lungs – the patient can be taken for urgent medical care at Watford General Hospital. In her case suspicions by the doctor at Gossoms End led her to being scanned and then treated at Watford and she was able to go back to Gossoms End for rehab after five days.

There are other human qualities. It is small – just 20 beds – some patients like my wife have their own room.The food is home cooked on the premises, there is a cheery dining room overlooking a small park. There is a terrace and gardens outside. It also does out-patient physiotherapy, has a GP surgery attached and is surrounded by sheltered housing. Even two private retirement developments are now located near this hospital. My sister-in-law , who is a community nurse, was so impressed that she thought it might be a private facility. But it is not. Indeed it has just had a £200,000 refurbishment ( see http://www.hertfordshire.nhs.uk/news-and-events/press-releases/2010-press-releases/208-refurbishment-at-gossoms-end-complete.html).

Berkhamsted is extremely lucky to have this facility. From what I can see there are other such places – but no national directory of how many there are. It seems this provision is very hit and miss.

Yet at the same time the coalition and Labour are supposed to be planning major changes to help Britain’s elderly population by concentrating funds to keep them fit and healthy and provide proper support. I challenge Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat minister responsible for social care, and Andy Burnham, Labour ‘s shadow health secretary, to visit Gossoms End and see how the unsung part of the NHS is working. They need to listen, learn and then act. So far the pair of them are ignoring my emails.Perhaps the minister and the opposition health spokesman aren’t bovvered.

My recovering wife, Margaret; my daughter, Anne, and grandchildren Tegan, Leon,Ryan and Daryan on the terrace at Gossoms End

PS Many thanks to all those who sent Margaret get well cards, messages of support and have taken the time to come and visit her. You have all been very kind and caring.

Some three years ago I railed about the failure of the NHS services on the Isles of Scilly to diagnose a triple fracture of my shoulder. I complained to the then primary healthcare trust and about the misdiagnosis by the GP run hospital on St Mary’s. Since then it looked to me that the service had improved.Little did I know I was about to test it again.

On a gloriously fine Friday my wife Margaret were sitting out on the terrace of the Ruined Cottage cafe on Tresco while two of our grandchildren were playing on the beach. Suddenly my wife complained of feeling dizzy and moved into the shade. Within seconds her speech had become slurred, her vision impaired and she could hardly communicate.

What I didn’t realise is that she had had a stroke totally out of the blue. What happened next virtually saved the day The waiter realising something was wrong got her a glass of water and a sugary drink. The cafe called the first responders, volunteers trained by the NHS who arrived in five minutes. They took her pulse and called a paramedic who got to Tresco in 15 minutes from another island. He called in an air ambulance which got to Tresco within 30 minutes enough for them to take her by road ambulance to the heliport on the other side of the island. By 5.0 pm she was at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro – under two hours from her collapse. She was immediately given a brain scan and is now starting to recover in stroke ward.

But what was well beyond the call of duty was the way the responders and the cafe proprietor also looked after me and by now stunned grandchildren. They were taken away from the scene by the staff and given drinks. They organised my tickets so that I could get off the island the next morning by boat, despite nearly all places being taken because it was end of half term. They checked the times of trains to Truro from Penzance and even the number of a taxi firm in Truro and a good B & B so we could stay there. They even gave me a BT phone so I could ring my daughter tell her what happened – as there is no mobile signal at my cottage.

I couldn’t thank them enough for all their help – they checked up on us the next morning to see we were all right. Now I have the difficult part of waiting to see how Margaret recovers. But it is a timely reminder of how valuable the NHS is to Britain, something we take for granted and how important it is that in this case that all this is provided free of charge. Imagine the bills for just getting my wife to hospital.